The powerful pachyderm

In April 2003, in the temple town of Udupi, an elephant called Lakshmisha went on rampage, creating havoc in the Car Street near the Krishna Temple for several hours.

In 2013, the same elephant turned violent again, near Puttur, killing its mahout. The number of incidents involving captive elephants are relatively low in Karnataka though, when compared to the neighbouring state of Kerala. Hardly a year goes by without a few incidents of elephants running amok in elephant-crazy Kerala, especially in the festival season when elephants are paraded.

I remember two such incidents in 2003 which were aired on television channels before stricter protocols were established to prevent airing of such violent scenes. I still wince as I recall the terrified cries of one of the mahouts as his elephant seized him and ruthlessly dashed him on the ground. Another image — of the limp body of a mahout dangling from the tusk of his protégé like a rag doll haunted me for a long time.

Elephant ire

When my interest in temple architecture took me to monuments all over the country, some sculptural panels I saw forcefully brought back those barely suppressed scenes to mind. Though depictions of elephants in religious architecture in India are quite common, quite a few scenes depict angry elephants turning on people.

Why would such gory scenes find place in a house of worship? Elephants have for long been associated with pomp and grandeur, as kings and gods have ridden on them on festive occasions. Elephants abound in sculptural depictions on early Buddhist stupas too — right from the white elephant that entered the womb of the Buddha’s mother in her dreams to the elephants which carry the relics of the master after his parinirvana.

The depiction of elephants in the 2nd century AD sculptural reliefs of the Buddhist stupa at Kanaganahalli, near Sannati in Kalaburagi district, demonstrates the easy familiarity that early artisans had with the anatomy of the Asian elephant. The images, carved in shallow relief, are testimonies to the enormous skills of the sculptors, who seem to be of the same school that built the larger stupa at Amaravati. One of the broken panels shows an elephant with musth fluid streaking its cheeks, flowing down from the gland between the eye and the ear, showing the acquaintance of the sculptor with this phenomenon. Of course, the brilliant poetic references to musth elephants in the Tamil Sangam literature, roughly contemporary to this monument, also paint vivid word-pictures of this condition in tuskers.

Guardians of walls

Elephant sculptures form part of the embellishment in temple architecture — as guardians flanking portals, or in relief on walls or basement mouldings, in monuments from virtually every dynasty. In Karnataka, from early monuments like the Kanaganahalli stupa to the temples of the Badami Chalukya, Rashtrakuta, Kalyani Chalukya, Hoysala and Vijayanagar dynasties, we encounter the elephant in abundance. Early depictions  like at Kanaganahalli and Badami remain truest to anatomical detail, while we see a “stylising” happening in later periods.

Apart from adding to the pomp and grandeur of kings and temples, elephants were indispensable as war machines too. Many are the stories of war elephants arrayed on battlefields resembling a surge of dark storm clouds or the crucial role of elephants in routing many an enemy army. The veteran elephant catcher P D Stracey, in his book Elephant Gold describes how war elephants were trained to swing heavy chains to mow down foot soldiers of the opposing army.

This probably explains why elephant sculptures, often flanking entry portals, are shown with a length of rope or chain held in their trunks. Though sometimes wounded or frightened elephants could turn on their own army, they were an important part of armies till the advent of gunpowder made them redundant.

It is quite possible that many of the sculpted panels in temples showing elephants attacking people depict war elephants. The temple, often a public monument built to glorify the ruler, was naturally replete with scenes depicting elephants, which helped in maintaining that glory over rivals.

Your elephants
Their white tusks broken
Battering enemy doors open
Look like death

sings Paranar, in praise of King Ilanchetchenni (Purananuru 4) in the Sangam Literature. We find similar descriptions of elephants as powerful war machines in several accounts of the military might of kings. The spectacular martial success of the famous Chalukyan King Pulakeshi I of Badami, who routed no less an adversary than Emperor Harsha, was attributed to his crack force of elephants. We learn from the account of the itinerant Hiuen Tsang how no army could stand up to the onslaught of these war elephants which, along with their mahouts, were fortified with liberal doses of alcohol!

Some scenes, however, might simply depict accidents involving captive elephants. A panel at Sringeri shows a mahout on an elephant trying to control it with a goad, even as it is grabbing an unfortunate man in its trunk, while another person on the ground is trying to dissuade the pachyderm with a spear. These eloquent records in stone, apart from glorifying the martial might of erstwhile kingdoms, also pay silent tribute to the mahouts — those men who live, and sometimes die, in the shadow of the beast they care for.